Category: Antiques

Sustainable interior decorating

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Just as the IPCC ‘Climate Wake-up call report’ is published this morning, I thought I would repost an updated version of this blog from January 2020. It feels like a drop in the ocean perhaps but every little helps, I hope.

Adopting sustainable interior decorating ideas really doesn’t mean that ‘style’ has to exit stage left! Quite the contrary. I believe a new sustainable approach based on a few old school values means that interior style is having a healthy rejig. With a little inspiration from the past, here are a few sustainable interior decorating ideas with a focus on some inspiring companies who are not only making changes about how they do things but who are sharing it quite vocally too.

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Collage of images of Jo Beavan's Oxfordshire farmhouse home on Charis White Interiors blog

House and garden tour: Polkadot Parsley

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Are you the sort of house hunter who knows straight away whether it is ‘the one’ or not? This was very much the case for Jo Beavan who runs her successful online ceramic oven to tableware business Polkadot Parsley. Jo and her husband Simon who is a chartered civil engineer, have a long-standing love of France and of period homes. So when Jo spotted an Oxfordshire farmhouse for sale with a Georgian frontage and a French-style walled garden, the contracts were as good as signed. The only slight sticking point was that their own family house wasn’t on the market yet…

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Dunrobin Castle attic sale

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When a press release dropped into my inbox for a forthcoming attic sale at Dunrobin Castle in Sutherland, I think my jaw also dropped, just ever so slightly. Sales like this don’t happen very often. A recent decluttering of the attics and cellars at the Scottish castle revealed generations of long forgotten treasures of domestic life. Prior to the sale on 20 April 2021, Bonhams auctioneers in Edinburgh have curated a selection of some of the 450 lots with an evocative set of photos.

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Garden design at The Newt, Somerset

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If like me you are drawn to colour, pattern and texture in all its forms, I hope you might enjoy this snapshot of some inspirational garden design ideas from a recent visit to the gardens at The Newt in Somerset. The garden had been on my radar for a while so I was excited to be able to take the opportunity to make a flying visit.

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Fanny's Antiques collage on Charis White Interiors blog

Fanny’s Antiques

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Alongside the re-opening of other ‘non-essential’ shops this week was one of Reading’s Sleeping Beauties . Fanny’s Antiques awoke from its lockdown state to the new normal and an appreciative audience of interior designers, stylists and general hunter-gatherer-types who couldn’t wait for it to open its doors again. Continue reading “Fanny’s Antiques” →

Grandmillenials collage on Charis White Interiors blog

Grandmillennial style

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I am rather tickled by a phrase that has emerged from the U.S. to describe the return of Old School or English Decorating. It is a favourite blog topic and one that is currently experiencing a renaissance of interest on both sides of the Atlantic. Thanks to Emma Bazilian in her September 2019 piece for US House Beautiful magazine (a much preppier version of Hearst’s UK edition), Grandmillennial style has been coined.

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Oxfam superstore

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Take the formula of an out of town supermarket, add a few ingredients from IKEA, the precise display skills of a west London prop house and finally a sprinkling of sports store Decathlon to discover the recipe behind Oxfam’s new superstore design. The blog takes a tour of this new sustainable and charitable department store concept to find out what might make us all want to shop there.

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Totty Lowther on her horse with her Pomegranate wallpaper design for Lewis & Wood on Charis White Interiors blog

Pomegranate design for Lewis & Wood

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Textile design is as much about storytelling as it is about design for me. The storytelling is important because I want to know how the design came about and from whom. When it comes to the plot, the quirkier, the better. Especially when the protagonist has not only worked as a set decorator in the world of film, for at least two of Britain’s most treasured interior brands, but whose debut fabric and wallpaper designs for Lewis & Wood are currently lining the walls of an interior designed shipping container in the Cumbrian Hills.

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Watlington Art Week collage on Charis White Interiors blog. Angela Swan Greaves portrait by Eva Nemeth

Watlington Art Week 11 – 19 May 2019

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Watlington is a small Oxfordshire market town that is blessed with that rare species – a thriving independent high street. Nestled amongst farmland at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, it has ‘a butcher, a baker and a candlestick maker’. The butcher is called Tom, the 14-year-old baker (as featured in The Sunday Times) regularly creates queues halfway up the street for her pop-up bread sales, while the candlestick maker has show-stopping designer lighting. Oh, and the town is also about to launch its first Art Week.

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